Modeling the Liberation of Iron Ores with Different Grain Sizes Considering Intergranular Fracture

ABSTRACT

Predicting the liberation distribution of minerals in comminuted ore particles is one of the fundamental problems in mineral processing. However, there is still no widely accepted liberation model due to the complexity of the mineral fracture mechanism. In this study, the shape constants of the cumulative beta distribution were further optimized based on the investigation of the liberation distribution and fracture mechanism of iron oxide minerals in three types of iron ores with different grain sizes by locked-cycle grinding and batch grinding to model the liberation distribution of iron oxide minerals with different grinding methods. The results showed that the liberation distribution of iron oxide minerals in the three types of iron ores with locked-cycle grinding and batch grinding was related to intergranular fracture proportion and the closeness of ore particle size and mineral grain size. By relating the shape constants of cumulative beta distribution to ore particle size, mineral grain size, and the proportion of intergranular fracture, the developed liberation model well predicted the liberation distribution of iron oxide minerals with different grinding methods and its coefficient of determination (R²) was between 0.85–0.93.

KEYWORDS:

• Liberation distribution
• grain size
• modeling
• iron oxide mineral
• data verification

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Credit author statement

Keqiang Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing.

Wanzhong Yin: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing – Review & Editing.

Weiran Zuo: Methodology.

Yafeng Fu: Investigation.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Nos. 52174239]